Medical practitioners, such as military medics, civilian emergency-medical personnel, nurses, and/or physicians, routinely perform medical and/or medical and/or vascular-access procedures (e.g., intravenous insertion, central venous line placement and/or peripherally-inserted central catheter, etc). It is desirable for a practitioner to be proficient at performing these procedures since a proficient practitioner is less likely to injure a patient and/or is almost certain to reduce a patient's level of discomfort.
Becoming proficient in medical and/or medical and/or vascular-access procedures requires practice. In fact, a certification and/or re-certification requirements of some states mandate a minimal number of needle sticks, etc., per year per provider. Historically, medical practitioners practiced needle-based procedures on live volunteers. More recently, simulation techniques and/or devices have been developed to provide training in medical and/or vascular-access procedures optionally without a use of live volunteers.
Some medical and/or vascular-access simulation systems that are in background publications include an interface device and/or a data processing system. To practice a medical and/or vascular-access procedure, a user manipulates an “instrument,” which extends from a device and/or serves as a catheter-needle.
Potentiometers and/or encoders within an interface device track a motion and/or position of an instrument and/or relay this information to a data processing system. A data processing system performs a simulation of a structure and/or substructure of human anatomy, and/or determines an effect of an instrument's motion on a the anatomy. Simulated results are displayed by a data processing system. Using a motion information from an interface device, a data processing system also generates a control signal that controls a force-feedback system that is coupled to an instrument. A force-feedback system generates various resistive and/or reactive forces that are intended to simulate a forces that are experienced by a medical practitioner during an actual medical and/or vascular-access procedure. A user senses these forces during manipulation of an instrument.
Although some systems in background publications have an ability to simulate medical procedures like percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), they are of limited value in assisting the medical professionals to prepare for their upcoming procedures since those systems don't have the capability to rapidly build a simulation based on the incoming patient's unique anatomy. Without the ability to build patient-specific simulations rapidly, those systems cannot provide decision support during mission-critical procedures like cardiac catheterization. As a result, physicians relies mostly on subjective pattern recognition and subjective quantification of key features to diagnose and treat patients.
The inability of prior medical and/or vascular-access simulation systems to realistically simulate a medical and/or vascular-access procedure for incoming patients limits their usefulness as training and/or accreditation tools.
There are currently many drawbacks of traditional medical image sharing approaches, including limitations on image where sharing is based on transferring original image files (e.g. DICOM files). For example, methods can include direct transfer of the image files, storage and/or archiving of the files on internal or external servers, that can be accessed by authorized users, but are limited to viewing the image files on a computer or mobile device. However, many medical images (e.g., CT scans) are saved as very large files that can be difficult or not possible for practical online transfer and/or storage, and/or which require the use of specialized servers, software, hardware, and/or connection of the imaging devices themselves. Additionally, various security and encryption systems also limit the availability or prevent access to such medical images.
Thus there are problems with accessibility and/or needed capabilities and associated costs for medical and other health professionals to have access to medical images which can be important for one or more of diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, or evaluation of patients.
Additionally, there is a need for online access by patients to healthcare professionals as an alternative to patients traveling to healthcare professionals, which can involve long and/or costly travel and lodging for patients to visit healthcare professionals that they can need to consult with for their medical and/or healthcare needs. Alternatively or additionally, patients can need to consult with several healthcare professionals simultaneously or in a coordinated manner, and online access would provide a solutions to these and other related or unrelated healthcare issues, which would include the transfer and review and/or analysis of medical images associated with one or more patients.
Furthermore, all medical personnel working at actual medical sites can recognize that when opinions are exchanged via documents, problems with communication can occur in the exchange of opinions based only on documents and also it take a long time to transfer opinions. Accordingly, a need arises to enable remote collaborative diagnoses to be easily made.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide solutions to the above problems that could allow easy, low cost, and/or more universal access to medical images for use by healthcare professionals and patients.